High-Risk Affair

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She wanted desperately to believe she would have that chance. With one last shaky smile, she gathered Hailey and climbed into the off-road vehicle.

  "No way in hell. You're not going in there."

  Cale barely spared his partner a look as he continued cinching on his harness. "How are you planning to stop me?"

  "I've got Flex-Cufs or regular handcuffs. Take your pick."

  "Sorry, partner, but I'm choosing door number three."

  They stood in front of the mine entrance where he and Daniel had managed to round up some improvised cave gear that would at least let them get started while they waited for reinforcements.

  The county's only two volunteer firefighters trained in underground rescue had been searching all night for Cameron and had been sent home a few hours earlier. They had been called back but wouldn't be there for a while. Other counties in the state were sending reinforcements, but in the meantime, he and Daniel had decided to take a cursory look around until they could arrive.

  Cale couldn't have explained his urgency but something told him they needed to get the search going right away. Cameron needed his seizure medication as soon as possible. Even an hour's delay seemed too long.

  Gage didn't seem to feel the same urgency Cale did. His partner frowned at him. "You're two weeks off a gunshot wound. You know you're in no physical shape for an underground rescue."

  "I'm fine. You can stop babysitting me now, Gage."

  "This is so far against regulation it's not even in the same stratosphere of the agency rule book. You're an FBI agent, not some Rescue Ranger. Curtis is going to have both our asses for this."

  "Our assignment was to help find Cameron Vance. That's exactly what I'm doing."

  His partner opened his mouth to argue but Cale cut him off. "Gage, I know what I'm doing. There are only two people here right now who have ever participated in a cave rescue before. One of them is Daniel Galvez, and I'm the other one. This is my decision. We can't afford to waste time waiting for other trained personnel to arrive from other parts of the state, not when the sheriff and I can go in now."

  "You've been up all night and your arm is nowhere near healed. How much help do you really think you're going to be?"

  He had considered both of those facts. But he knew he had no choice. "I need to do this."

  His partner studied him for a long moment, then sighed and backed down. Cale wondered at the reason for it. Could McKinnon see the desperate hope in his eyes, the urgency burning inside him to do everything he could to expedite a happy ending in this case?

  It didn't make any sense, he knew, but somehow finding Cameron Vance had become vital to healing the jagged, gaping wounds on his soul from the events of two weeks earlier.

  "Be careful," McKinnon said.

  Cale managed a smile as the sheriff approached them. "I'm always careful."

  "Ready?" Galvez asked.

  "Let's do it."

  Inside the dark chamber, the air was cool, heavy, pressing in on all sides. Their helmet lights played off earthen and rock walls shored up by rotting timbers. He couldn't begin to guess how old this mine was. The possibility for cave-ins was a real danger.

  They moved into the mine with Daniel in the lead. The lunnel was a straight shot and pretty easygoing at first. He could definitely see how this would appeal to a young boy.

  They sloped slightly downhill for about twenty feet before they hit their, first intersection. In a typical cave rescue with various teams, they would split here and explore both directions until they found some evidence of the missing caver.

  Since they didn't have that luxury, Cale figured they would have to roll the dice, until his headlamp picked up an unmistakable clue.

  "See that?" Daniel asked.

  Cale traced the white chalk arrow, low on the earthen wall. "This kid is no dummy."

  "Let's hope he's smart enough to stay alive in here," the sheriff replied grimly.

  "I've got a feeling we're not going to have arrows showing us the whole way, but let's start in that direction. Do you agree?"

  Daniel nodded and Cale took the lead. Both men had to crouch at various points along the mine shaft. They encountered two forks in about fifty yards, leading in opposite directions. Each time, they found another chalk arrow pointing them in the direction they needed to go.

  At the second fork, the shaft suddenly angled steeply upward and Cale was suddenly aware of an odd smell. Something familiar and sharp, like cat urine.

  "Smell that?" he asked Daniel, instinctively yanking up his mask with one hand and pulling out his weapon with the other.

  The sheriff nodded, yanking up a mask, as well. "I know that smell." The mask muffled his voice and he spoke low, pulling out his own sidearm. "I've busted four meth labs around here in the last six months."

  "Who's stupid enough to cook in a damn cave?" Cale whispered.

  "You wouldn't believe the places where they can set up an operation. We've got a real problem in the middle of the wilderness. Hikers have stumbled onto several meth labs."

  Both of them shut off their headlamps and were immediately pitched into blackness. No trace of light appeared, which was a hopeful sign that this was an old cook site and no one was around.

  Still, the sheriff turned on a small flashlight that only provided focused light and eased up the incline carefully. Cale let him take over point. This was his territory, his county. He was just along for the ride.

  All kinds of grim scenarios ran through his brain as he inched up behind the sheriff. A curious nine-year-old boy and a meth cook were not a combination that boded well for a good outcome, and he hated considering the possibilities.

  At the top of the incline, the sheriff made room for him beside him and Cale realized they were looking down on a large chamber, perhaps twenty feet in circumference.

  The sheriff took a chance and turned on his headlamp, illuminating the space below. It was obvious this was a cold site, though they found plenty of evidence it had been used as a lab. There were empty bottles of chemicals, tubing, beakers, a camp stove. Everything necessary for a large-scale meth lab.

  They climbed down into the chamber. "You think Cameron Vance stumbled on to this?" Cale voiced his fear aloud.

  "I surely hope not."

  He moved around the chamber, looking for some clue the boy might have been here. Another tunnel led off from the main chamber. To the left of it, Cale spied a vertical shaft. He aimed his headlamp down and felt all the air leave his lungs.

  "Dan! Bring your light over here!"

  The sheriff hurried over and aimed his headlamp into the abyss. The combined force of their lights played off a body crumpled at an awkward angle, the features gray and motionless.

  Cale wasn't even aware of the long string of bitter curses spewing out of him until Daniel laid a hand on his arm.

  "It's not the boy, Cale. I know this guy. We've just found our missing pothead. And by the looks of those rubber gloves on his hands, I would guess Wally Simon branched out into meth cooking, too."

  He took a ragged breath, pushing away the cold despair that had washed over him at the first sight of that body. He had lost any trace of objectivity and distance in this case, he realized grimly.

  "You think he was tweaking and fell?" he asked.

  "Maybe. I would guess though that the bullet hole in his forehead had something to do with his death."

  Cale sighed, grateful the sheriff was a good enough friend he would probably be willing to overlook his stupidity.

  Definitely a bullet hole, he saw now as he looked closer. Had Cameron Vance stumbled onto a drug-related murder? If so, were they going to find his bullet-riddled body dumped somewhere in here?

  His stomach burned at the possibility and he knew if they did, he would have to quit the job. He couldn't do this anymore, not if he had to be the one to tell Megan her son was dead.

  "I have to call this in, Cale," Daniel said, reaching for the World War II-era military field telephone they
had rounded up, since modern cell phones and radio receivers wouldn't work underground.

  "Wait. You've got to tell Megan first. You know how word spreads on a rescue like this. I don't want her hearing we found a body in here without knowing the full story."

  "Yeah, you're right." A moment later, Daniel spoke into the phone to the communications specialist from the search and rescue unit who was standing by on the other end. "Fletcher, this is Galvez. 1 need you to patch me to Mrs. Vance's cell phone."

  He handed the phone to Cale. "You tell her. You have a better rapport with her than I do."

  Before Cale could protest that he had no such thing, Megan answered, a half hopeful, half terrified note in her voice as she said hello.

  "Megan—" he began, but she cut him off before he could say more.

  "Have you found him?"

  "No. Listen to me. We have not found him. We found a body inside the mine, but it is not Cameron. Repeat, it is not Cameron. Do you understand me?"

  There was a long silence on the other end. "A...a body? Whose body?" Her voice sounded baffled and frightened and he wanted more than anything to be with her to pull her into his arms.

  "I can't say anything about that yet. But I can tell you with a hundred percent certainty it is not your son. We're going to keep looking for Cameron, but I didn't want you to hear the radio chatter about us finding a dead body in here and reach the wrong conclusion, okay?"

  "You're sure it's not him?"

  "Absolutely."

  "All right." She still sounded wary, but the abject fear was gone from her voice. "Caleb, be careful."

  The tenderness settling in his chest at the concern he heard in her voice terrified him more than anything he was likely to encounter in the mine shafts.

  "Right. I'll keep you posted."

  He handed the phone back to Daniel, who immediately called the communications specialist again so he could report their discovery.

  He knew the sheriff would be busy for some time dealing with the logistics of running an investigation into both a meth lab and a murder, but he was impatient to keep looking.

  "I'm going to check a few things out while you're waiting for the reinforcements to work the murder scene. I won't go far."

  Daniel nodded, obviously distracted as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone. Cale took off down the horizontal shaft that branched off the main chamber.

  He hadn't gone far before he spotted the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, a small glow. He followed it and a few moments later was surprised to emerge on what he deduced was the other side of the slope, quite a bit lower in elevation from where he and Daniel had entered. This entrance was concealed by thick willows and scrub oak, as well, but it was only about twenty feet from a dirt road.

  He guessed this had been the entry point for the meth cook. It would be far more convenient and accessible. Why hike a quarter mile uphill to the mine carrying chemicals and cook supplies when you could drive almost right into it?

  He returned to the dank mine interior to report his findings to the sheriff. As he backtracked, his mind considered what might have gone on inside the mine.

  Had Cameron Vance had the misfortune to wander in and find the drug operation? He didn't know Wally Simon, but he did know meth cooks were a dangerous breed. They were usually users themselves, often tweaking on crank while they mixed and poured deadly chemicals, too hopped up to use any kind of common sense.

  Most cooks wouldn't even think about setting up without a weapon on hand—not just on hand, but in hand. He couldn't think of too many creatures on earth more deadly than an armed addict crazy enough to shoot battery acid and antifreeze into his bloodstream.

  Cameron was a smart kid, though. He took comfort from that. He wanted to be a SEAL like his father. If he could climb out his bedroom window, he had to know enough about stealth tactics that he wouldn't just blunder into a dangerous situation.

  Maybe the cook was already dead when Cam found the scene. Or maybe he discovered the drug activity and tried to go for help, but took a wrong turn somewhere.

  His gut was telling him the two things were connected—Cam's disappearance and the meth lab they had found. It was entirely too coincidental that Cameron just happened to disappear in the vicinity of a murder scene and illegal drug activity.

  He had been gone no longer than ten minutes, but by the time he returned to the main chamber, a half dozen people were milling around, all of them poten-tially destroying any evidence that Cameron might have been there.

  "I'm going to be busy here for a while," Daniel said with an apologetic frown. "But the cavers from Salt Lake County's SAR team are about twenty minutes away."

  "I'll keep looking on my own before any trace is completely destroyed," he told the sheriff, who nodded in understanding.

  "Keep the phone with you," he said.

  Moving quickly, Cale worked his way back in the direction they had come. Several tunnels intersected off this one. One was collapsed, with no room for anything larger than a small dog to make it through. The next one was large enough for him to walk with his head bowed only slightly. He looked around carefully for any sign Cam had been there.

  His gaze sharpened on the dirt and debris of the ground. If he wasn't mistaken, that looked like a footprint in the dirt—a small one, too, much too small to be made by anyone but a nine-year-old.

  Chapter 10

  An hour after Cale had called her to report finding a body inside the mine, Megan sat on her back deck overlooking the foothills, wondering how much more of this endless waiting she could endure with her sanity still intact.

  She didn't know what she found more difficult, the waiting or the endless parade of people trying to distract her from it.

  She had finally escaped out here for a little solitude after enduring a very difficult half hour with Father Timms, with that sonorous voice of his, who seemed to vacillate between trying as her ecclesiastical leader to help her hang on to some vestige of hope and preparing her for a less-than-desirable outcome.

  She hadn't been in Moose Springs long enough to develop any kind of spiritual trust with the man, so she mostly found his presence intrusive and irritating.

  He meant well. Everyone meant well, she knew. But she honestly didn't think she could bear one more person grabbing her hands and asking her how she was holding up.

  No doubt Caleb would probably tell her it wasn't at all healthy to spend so much of this vigil on her own. But when she was alone, she didn't have to worry about anyone else's emotions but her own. She could pour all her energy into praying her son would be returned to her.

  Now she sat out here on her favorite rocker, just below her kitchen window, with her knees pulled up, listening to the wind chimes clink and sing softly in a slight breeze that blew down the mountains.

  The kitchen window was just above her and through the open window she could hear the faucet go on as someone drew a glass of water.

  "You don't have to tell me that, Allie," she heard clearly through the window. It was Cale's partner, Gage McKinnon. She hadn't spoken with him much and had gotten the impression that he was a very competent, if slightly intimidating FBI agent.

  She didn't mean to eavesdrop on a private conversation and started to move out of earshot when Cale's name caught her attention.

  "I know that," the agent said, a note of frustration in his voice. "Cale is in absolutely no condition to be in those mine tunnels, either physically or emotionally."

  She frowned, sliding back into the rocker.

  "Don't you think I tried to talk him out of it?" McKinnon said into the phone. "It was like talking to a wall of granite. He had his mind set on it and nothing I said was going to change his mind."

  There was quiet for a moment as he listened to the other person on the line. "Yeah. Go ahead and say it, since I know you're dying to. I was wrong to bring him back on this one. As usual, you were right. He said he was ready and I believed him, but obviously he needed
more time."

  More time for what? Megan wondered. Why was Cale's partner so convinced he shouldn't be searching for Cameron?

  "I've never seen him like this," the agent said, and even from out here she could hear the worry in his voice. "He is completely consumed with finding this kid. I've seen him driven on a case before, but never like this."

  He paused again, listening to the other party. "Yeah, that's the logical conclusion. This has to do with him feeling like those two little girls died on his watch."

  Two little girls? So Cale was the FBI agent Molly had heard about. Her heart ached for him, for the sense of failure she knew he.must be living with. Heartsick and feeling guilty for eavesdropping, she rose and headed lor the back door to go inside, intending to announce her presence before the other agent said anything else.

  "I only hope we find the Vance kid safe and sound," the FBI agent said as she opened the door. "I'm afraid any other outcome just might be more than he can handle."

  She must have made some noise at that—or maybe he just sensed her presence. The FBI agent whirled to face her, and his mouth tightened. He let out an oath.

  "I've got to go, Al. I'll call you later."

  He ended the phone call and slipped the phone into his pocket, his hard features tight with regret.

  "I'm sorry you heard that. I'm not usually so indiscreet. Only when I'm worrying about a friend."

  Cale was her friend, as well. Somehow in the last day he had become someone she cared about, and she wanted to know why his partner was so concerned for his emotional and physical well-being.

  "I didn't mean to eavesdrop on your conversation, but I was sitting out on the deck and couldn't help hearing you through the open window. I'm sorry. But, please, can you tell me why you don't think Agent Davis should be in those tunnels looking for my son?"

  He closed his eyes for a moment, and she could see reluctance in every line of his body. He didn't want to tell her, she could tell.

  "He's not in the best place right now," he finally said slowly. "Cale is still recovering from an injury sustained on the job a few weeks ago and I'm worried he's pushing himself too hard and is going to reinjure his wound."